Pip Magazine Podcast

Interview with Adrian Iodice

In this podcast PIP magazine talks with Adrian Iodice from Beekeeping Naturally and we go inside the bee hive to learn about how we can best care for our bees and choose honey that supports the health of the bees.

Adrian explains his catch phrase ‘It’s not all about the honey’ and we learn how to care for bees in a way that puts their health first and the collection of honey second. We also talk about ways to choose the honey that will best support bees. We actually go inside the hive and harvest honey.

Natural vs Commercial Beekeeping

Robyn: Hi, and welcome to the PIP Permaculture Podcast number eighteen. I’m Robyn Rosenfeldt, editor and publisher of PIP Magazine, and today I’m talking with Adrian Iodice from Beekeeping Naturally. We’re going to look inside the beehive and learn about natural beekeeping and what makes honey so special.

Robyn: Thanks, Adrian, for having a chat.

Adrian: No worries.

Robyn: So in issue thirteen of PIP, we talked about honey and the different properties of honey. And in amongst that, we talked about caring for the bees and the different ways of managing bees so that it’s not necessarily about the honey, but it’s about caring for the bees as well. So your business and your focus is natural beekeeping. How (“What” in original) does natural beekeeping differ from, say, mainstream beekeeping?

Adrian: Well, it is a big question. Apart from the physical things and management side of it, which we can get into, a lot of the focus is drawn away from honey production.

A natural beekeeper will tend to care for the health of their bees foremost over the amount of honey they’re getting. In comparison, a commercial beekeeper will generally travel with their bees, taking them to pollination zones – almond pollination, apple, canola, and so forth. This has been proven to not be very good for the bees’ health. They’re feeding on one type of pollen and nectar for weeks on end, and bees need a variety of different food sources, as we all do.

That alone is one reason natural beekeeping differs from commercial or conventional beekeeping. The focus is taken away from honey production and put into stagnant hives – hives that stay in your backyard. We focus our attention on the well-being and health of our bee colony.

Robyn: Also, talking about taking them to almond plantations and things like that, there’s also the danger of the use of pesticides and that building up in the hive.

Adrian: Absolutely. Almond crops are sprayed all the time with fungicides and pesticides, as most crops are today. You’ve got literally millions of bees from all over the country going into a certain area in South Australia. This is just for almond pollination – there’s other pollinations happening all over the country at different times of the season.

When all these bees come in from different zones, if there’s a disease outbreak in one apiarist’s (“acreist’s” in original) colonies, that disease can spread quickly to other beekeepers in the area. So we’re really putting bees at risk eating a lot of almonds, to be honest.

Robyn: And I guess they take those diseases back to where they’re from and spread them around to the local area?

Adrian: Pests and diseases (“Pesting diseases” in original), absolutely. So that’s a detriment to the bees’ health as well.

Environmental and Pesticide Concerns

Robyn: And what about the build up of pesticides in the comb and things like that? How does that affect the bees?

Adrian: Over time, wax itself is a product that the bees create. The honeycomb, the wax that it’s made of – they exude it from wax glands from their body, then they chew it up and add propolis and other enzymes to it to make the cells, make the honeycomb. Wax is really fat if you think about it. That’s why it burns well as a candle.

What happens is the residue of the pesticides and fungicides, the wax absorbs those residues and holds them. Then over time, over a few years, those residues become quite strong inside the wax.

Robyn: Is that also related to the practice of reusing combs as opposed to taking the comb, crushing it, getting the honey out, and then using that wax for a byproduct? Is that more of a natural beekeeping style, doing it that way than spinning it and then reusing the comb?

Adrian: Yes, definitely. A good beekeeper will move old brood comb out towards the end, towards the honey area. The brood comb is where the babies have been raised, in the nest area of the hive. Over time, those brood combs slowly get moved out towards the honey area. The honey’s kept separately from the brood area – there are two separate areas.

A good beekeeper will over time move those brood combs out towards the end and harvest them out with honey, usually between two to four years. A lot of commercial beekeepers, unfortunately, will tend to keep the brood area separate from the honey area, and keep the brood area intact for longer periods. Therefore, more residues will build up in that brood area.

Also, when honey is harvested out of a commercial hive or a conventional hive, the honeycomb isn’t crushed. The cappings are taken off the cells, and the honeycombs are put into a centrifugal extractor that spins rapidly and extracts the honey out of the cells. Those wax frames then are called “stickies,” and they’re able to be put back into the beehive and filled again quickly by the bees.

This leads to more residue coming in because each time a bee forages out on a flower, it’s bringing home a product, whether that be nectar or pollen. But in the case of bringing nectar, that nectar will have some residue of the pesticide in it. Therefore, passing it into that cell again, the wax cell then absorbs that residue of pesticide, stores it in the wax, and the process is repeated over and over again until there’s quite a lot of that residue in the wax.

Sustainable Hive Management

Robyn: Your slogan for beekeeping naturally is “it’s not all about the honey.” What are some of the ways that you, as a natural beekeeper, look after the bees so that their welfare is the first consideration and honey collection is second?

Adrian: One of the key practices is having stagnant hives, leaving my hives in one place, not moving them around chasing the honey flow. I’m not paying mortgages with honey, so there’s no need for me to chase honey to pay bills. Commercial beekeepers are different. I can leave my hives in my backyard and pretty much leave them alone.

Because I’m not selling honey – I give a lot of my honey away when I have it – I tend to not really work my bees that hard. Once the hive’s full, it’s full. They can’t fill it up anymore with extra honey that they may collect. So a week or two might go past, and I haven’t got around to harvesting any more honey out. The bees actually just sit around waiting. They’ve got a full house. They’re quite content. They can either swarm at that time or, late in the season which is now, they start cleaning up and maintaining the health of their colony, keeping hive beetle at bay, keeping disease at bay, adding propolis to the inside of the hive – which is a really important thing for them.

Robyn: Why is it important?

Adrian: Well, propolis acts as a defense mechanism. It’s like an inner membrane around the actual organism, around the beehive, the bee colony itself. If we picture the bee colony as an organism, a super organism, and each bee is a cell of that organism, then the propolis is on the outside of that organism. Every square millimeter of the internal surface of the beehive is covered in propolis. It’s got a fine coating of propolis.

Propolis has been tested and it’s highly antibacterial. It actually acts as part of the bee’s immune system. Scientists have been doing a lot of studies on propolis, and we now know how important it is for the bees to maintain a good volume of propolis on the internal surface of the beehive.

Each time we go into a beehive, we’re breaking that seal that keeps pathogens out, and the bees have to work hard then to manage and control that breach. Rudolf Steiner goes as far as saying each time you go into a beehive, it’s the equivalent of opening a person’s chest up and letting disease and pathogens in. When you work with bees at the depth of understanding that I’ve learned over time, you can really get a feeling for that expression.

So it’s really important in natural beekeeping that we don’t break that seal as often as conventional practices suggest. As long as we can maintain a pest-free and disease-free hive, then we’re doing the right thing and leaving the bees to do their thing.

Right now, my hives are absolutely full of honey. I harvested about sixty kilos out of three or four hives about four weeks ago. I haven’t harvested anything since, and I know they’re full because the eucalypts have been flowering. But what am I going to do with sixty kilos of honey sitting in buckets? Yes, I can sell it and give it away, but that’s not what it’s about for me.

So the bees are content, just hanging around doing their thing, enjoying life, and not being worked to the bone. Each time we take honey out of the hive, the bees need to replace that gap. Bees despise gaps in their hive – they don’t like having spare space. They fill it because they want to work and they want to fill it. That’s their nature. But if it’s an empty hollow tree, they would fill it to the brim and then do their thing, which is cleaning and looking after their own well-being. So that’s another part of natural beekeeping – just letting them do their thing.

Honey Production & Harvesting

Robyn: So we’re going to go and have a look at the hives and harvest some honey. But before that, I’d like to hear about how you got into beekeeping, and where you’re at with it now. I know you’re extremely passionate about it – your relationship with the bees, and how it is for you when you open a hive.

Adrian: I can’t remember exactly when I got bees. I was growing my own vegetables in the suburbs of Melbourne, had a veggie garden. I come from an Italian background, and mom’s a passionate gardener. My grandfather on my dad’s side was a market gardener in Italy growing carrots and watermelons. So I think it’s in my genetics to garden. I love gardening and growing my own veggies and feeding my family things from our garden.

I think for me it was just a natural progression to get bees and have some of my own honey. Back then, there was no such thing known as natural beekeeping. I just did what the old fellows told me – change queens and put new queens in every year, pretty much run a hive as a commercial beekeeper would. That’s pretty much how most people are taught these days – commercial practices.

Then I did a biodynamic course and met a wonderful man called Tobias Megha. He’s a biodynamic market gardener who sells produce at the Warburton markets in Victoria. He’s an old school beekeeper as well, a German man, and we’ve become quite good friends over the years. He sent me off to Germany to do a beekeeping course at a place called Milleferra in southern Germany with Thomas Rudetsky.

When I got back, I said to Tobias, “This needs to be available in Australia. Nobody’s teaching biodynamic beekeeping here.” I mean, Tim Malfroy was the only person I knew at the time in Australia teaching natural beekeeping. So we wanted to teach something else – natural beekeeping, but also bring in a huge biodynamic component. That’s how we got started. Tobias and I formulated a course.

At the time, there was interest in bees but it wasn’t like now. Right now, there’s so much interest in bees. It seems like everyone’s talking about bees, and rightly so because of what’s happening to bees around the world. There’s so much of a link between bees and our food source, but it goes deeper than that. It goes to our spirituality and our sacredness.

If we look at our history with bees, human history with bees, there’s more connection than just honey and pollination. There’s sacredness there. And that’s where I’m starting to head now – into that field. Getting into the sacredness of bees and what that means, and how that can relate to my spiritual self and people that I can bring into that realm as well.

I’m very passionate about bees, but I’m doing a lot less beekeeping these days and just being with bees.

Robyn: Should we go out and check the hive and have a chat with you? There wasn’t much talk about honey.

Adrian: Sure. We can get onto the honey while we’re in the hive.

Robyn: Alright. Let’s go.

Practical Hive Inspection

Adrian: The first thing you should do is check the weather. That’s really important. If it’s a cold day, then we’re opening that organism and all that heat’s going to escape out of the hive. Bees try to maintain a temperature of around thirty-five to thirty-six degrees around the brood area.

We want to make sure that it’s a fairly warm day, but not too hot. If it’s over twenty-eight degrees, the bees get bothered. Plus, you’re dealing with wax comb that is really soft and can have major issues with breaking off. We tend to pick a day that’s about twenty degrees, low to mid-twenties, and fairly still because if it’s windy, the bees get quite upset.

The next thing is to prepare all my gear – what I’m going to use to harvest honey, a bucket or an esky. I’ll use an esky because it’s got a hingeable lid. It’s big enough that I can cut honeycomb off into the esky, close the lid quickly, and that deters other bees finding that honey source and getting in there.

It’s important to have all my tools on hand so I don’t have to leave the job. I carry a bag with all my tools in it. I even go as far as lighting my smoker and having it ready just in case I need it. I don’t often use a smoker, but it depends on the job I’m doing in the hive.

Every hive, every colony has its own personality, and that can vary from really defensive to completely docile. It depends on a lot of factors, but the big one is how they’ve been treated in the past. If I’m rough with my bees – disturbing them on a windy day and robbing all the honey out of their hive – at some point, they’re going to get quite annoyed with that behavior. The next time I come down, they’re going to say, “You don’t respect us, we’re going to give you a hard time now.”

Another factor is what they’ve been foraging on. Certain plant species can affect their behavior. For instance, Angophora that was flowering recently can make them a bit wild. I only just learned that one – the hard way. We were getting stung up at the house and wondering what was going on. But it’s the first time I’ve had to deal with Angophora.

I know bloodwood eucalypt honey does the same thing. If it’s been raining while the flowers have been in bloom, they tend to get a bit crazy on that stuff too. Some say that the nectar starts to ferment because of the rain, turns into mead, and the bees get drunk on it.

The next step is to approach the hive and just make sure they’re doing their thing at the front – coming and going, looking like they’re behaving normal and busy. We pick a warm day because most of the forager bees are out foraging, so we’re dealing with less bees inside the colony.

One of the important steps for me is to do a check-in with the bees. I’ll stand behind the hive, touch the hive on the top bars, and picture myself inside the hive. This is that spiritual connection I was talking about earlier. I go into the hive and picture myself as an actual bee in the hive, checking the honeycombs and letting them know what I’m going to do. I don’t think we need to talk to them, but I’m pretty sure they pick up on that energy.

Robyn: So you’re slowing down as well before you go in, so you don’t come in with all the energy of what you’ve been doing?

Adrian: Absolutely. That’s so important. If you’ve had an argument with your partner or your kids or your mate, it’s really important not to bring that energy down to the bee yard because they will pick up on that. I guarantee they’ll pick it up and mirror it right back to you.

If you come with gentleness and an open heart and really feel what you’re doing – because what you’re actually doing is going into that organism – bring the blessing with you. Feel the privilege of going in there taking some of their honey. They’ve been working really hard to get that honey, and we’re taking some, so being really grateful for that is important. And not taking too much – one or two bars here and there. You don’t have to do it all in one go. You can take a bar out today and a bar out next week, and that way the bees are less disturbed as well.

Honey Harvesting Process

Adrian: The basic tools I use here include an orange-handled fishing knife. It’s a really stiff-bladed fishing knife that cost me five dollars years ago. I don’t use a hive tool most of the time – I have one in my bag in case I need it, but generally this fishing knife does the job. I use it to pry open the top bars from each other.

Remember what I said earlier about the propolis – they tend to coat the entire surface with it, and it’s really sticky, like tar almost. They fill in all the gaps. Wherever the top bars meet each other, the bees will fill that gap with propolis and glue it together. So we need a stiff blade to pry that open.

As you can see here, there’s bees just slightly on the outside of the follower board because there’s a gap below. The follower board is like a false wall. It moves laterally in the Kenyan hive, left or right, on either side of the brood nest. There’s usually two follower boards in a Kenyan hive, depending on which one you’re using. This one has one because it’s an end entrance.

Moving that reveals one almost full bar of honeycomb. What we’re looking at is a beautiful honeycomb, and you can see how slowly I’m moving with no fast movements. It’s probably about just under two kilos. It’s not completely full – you can see there’s a few empty cells. They’re starting to bring in some nectar into these cells. The other side’s almost full – all these cells are capped, capped full of honey.

This one’s a harvestable honeycomb – completely capped with no empty cells, no uncapped cells all around. Unlike a conventional Langstroth hive where we’re ripping a roof off and all those bees become aware we’re in the hive and come up with vengeance, we’re only dealing with these bees on these two combs. The others are all still tucked away in the brood area. There’s not as many bees here in the honey area because it’s all sealed and capped – they’ve done their work.

When I crush a whole two-kilo comb down, I’m probably left with twenty grams of wax. It’s not a lot. This theory of “they take so much wax, so much honey to build wax” – it’s more about the time factor that it takes them to build the new comb. That’s what’s not beneficial for commercial beekeepers. If they’re crushing honeycomb, then they’re having to get the bees to rebuild that wax. The flowering period might only be three or four weeks, so if it takes them two weeks to rebuild all their combs and then fill them up with honey, they’ve lost that harvesting time.

That’s why the Kenyan’s not favored by commercial beekeepers, although there is someone running Kenyan hives commercially. The Jamberoo Abbey is running fourteen or fifteen Kenyan hives, which I helped set up. They’re selling their honey through the Abbey and making candles with their wax. Small-scale commercial beekeeping can work with Kenyan top bar hives – there’s more connection with the bees. You’re not dealing with a thousand hives and completely disconnected from all your colonies.

This blue box honey we’re harvesting today is special – the tree flowers between every four and six years. That’s it. So what’s it worth? We’re lucky to have it. If the honey industry in Australia would pick up its game and stop importing rubbish honey from overseas and really started marketing our honey as something special, then beekeepers would be paid more. They wouldn’t need to run so many hives, so they’d be more attentive to their colonies. It’s a win-win for everybody.

A honey, a tree that flowers every four to six years – what’s that honey worth? It’s got to be worth a lot more than five dollars a kilo. That’s what the packers, what the commercial guys get. It’s got to be worth twenty-five, thirty dollars for a jar of honey, I personally believe. And people would respect it and not just guzzle it down. They would sit there and really take in the aromas and flavors of that area and of that particular honey.

If you want good honey, there’s a honey map on Save the Bees website that Simon Mulvaney put together. You can put in your area, your postcode, and it’ll show you local, small-scale honey producers in your area that are selling honey locally. If you’re still not sure, go to the supermarket, grab one of those squeeze bottle honeys off the shelf, take it home and go and find a jar of honey from your local small-scale backyard beekeeper and taste the difference. I guarantee you will be shocked.

Robyn: Well, thanks, Adrian. That’s very enlightening and great to look inside the beehive and hear about ways to look after the bees better.

Adrian: No worries. Thanks. It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming down. It’s been a nice morning spending with you.

Robyn: Thanks, everyone. If you’d like to see photos and videos that were taken during that interview that will give you more of a visual representation of some of the things we were talking about, go to the Pip Magazine website at www.pipmagazine.com.au, click on podcasts, and find the podcast with Adrian Iodice.